I think what everyone would do well to remember is that all of us are pedestrians. On our feet, on a bike, in a vehicle. We are all fragile. We are all deserving of care, and kindness. And grace. And all of us should be thought of more dearly than any parking spot, anywhere.

Q: Where’s the funding? KO: Funding for the update came from the city council. Focus on neighborhood greenways and cycle tracks. Money for projects comes from the 2006 Bridging the Gap levy. Main source of funding now. Federal grants, too.

No planned Q and A, huh. But someone asking about NE 65th St cycle track anyway. KO: Street would be rechannelized. Not sure if 65th is staying on the plan or not, but if it was [describes the process, as with Nickerson]. If rechannelization was not recommended, SDOT would look for a parallel route.

Next steps: No final decisions made yet (plan released just last week). SDOT folks speaking to chamber groups, any other group who might be interested. Public comment closes July 26. SDOT revisions through August. Up for approval with Council this fall.

Public input questions: 1. Any parts you would change and why? Should a street have/not have a proposed bicycle facility? If not, where do you suggest it go? 2. Are there any gaps in the citywide “all ages and abilities” network?

KO says lots of talk already tonight about NE 65th St. Considered a multimodal corridor (bicycles on the same street as transit, major truck streets, other priority corridors). This is why the plan is calling for a cycle track along NE 65th St.

“Intersections are conflict points, for everybody.” Better toolkits for intersection treatments — can’t change the intersection, but it can be made safer (reduce speed, clarify vehicle and ped movements, etc.).

I’d say around 65 here now. A group near me is V.E.R.Y. anti-bicycle. Can’t believe someone would take a baby around on one. Thinks a city staffer he was taking to earlier nodded at something because she *wants* gridlock. Says local business will lose money with more bike lanes around.

[While I am here in the high school, waiting for the meeting to start, I am tempted to go find the science room where the hazmat call originated from (experiment that concerned a custodial staff member after hours)…but I shan’t.]

On some tables further away from the presentation screen are maps of all the sectors of the city, with pens nearby for scribbling thoughts and concerns — very similar to our recent NE 75th St meetings with SDOT.

There are posters up around the perimeter with bike plan info (visual glosseries, the approach to the investment in bike routes, how the bike project implementation works) and the maps of the current, planned, and proposed routes in the plan.

You can find this information at the main Bicycle Master Plan Draft site linked to above. ^^^^

About 35 people here already, maybe 8 or 9 of which are here to lead the meeting and answer questions. Since I got here, just before 6 PM, there has been an occasionally heated discussion at the front of the room between a couple staffers and some residents. Yeah, it started early.

I have not ridden much since high school, but “relearned” last year on Mother’s Day. Of the newsroom staff, the five-year-old just got up on two wheels this week. The 20-month-old has a little four-wheeler, and rides around the neighborhood with me and the older guy in a little trailer. As a group, we travel three blocks from our house, tops. Husband rides with us around the neighborhood on occasion. All recreational riding, except for the rare occasion when I have a local meeting (like this one tonight) and I take off on my own.

As a family, we never ride on arterials. I do alone only rarely, and usually on 20th Ave NE (a well-known bike route street and comfortably wide enough for me to feel safe on).

Comments

Hey, I was the guy who wanted an argument (not a fight!). I’m super embarrassed. This is how dumb I am: after I left I realized I wasn’t sure what side the guy in the suit was on. I got there late and assumed from his aggression he was on, uh, the wrong side.

I was uncivil and there’s no excuse for that. I feel bad for the SDOT staff because people can be incredibly rude to them and they have to be nice. That’s just bullying! The guy in the suit seemed like he really wanted to argue with someone so I thought I’d help him out, but I was running way too hot.

Rebecca — as usual, great coverage. Fun and interesting to read it in retrospective, having been there! By the way, you are exactly the type of biker this plan is intended for. Folks that are interested, maybe with kids, supportive of streets that work for all users, and willing to give more biking a try, but really not preferring to mix it up on the arterials with traffic. So input from folks like you is critical. Thanks for the good coverage and getting engaged in this!

N.E. 65th St. is a 36′ foot roadway betwen 20th Ave. N.E. and 35th Ave. N.E. It carries 1,250 vehicles per hour (including buses) during weekday peak hours. To carry the load, it needs two traveled lanes during peak hours in the direction of the flow (westbound in the morning and eastbound in the evening.) To make room for the cycle track, SDOT said it would “rechannelize” the roadway to one lane eastbound, one lane westbound, and one lane for turning and truck loading; and the rest would be reserved for bicycles. There would be no on-street parking. Two-lane traffic would be congested into a single lane with back-ups for at least half a mile on N.E. 65th St. Traffic seeking to enter would back up on side streets. Both the loss of on-street parking and the snail-pace of congested traffic would be devastating to small businesses on N.E. 65th St.
The City’s Seattle Transit Network Development Plan names N.E. 65th as the prime east-west feeder route for the Roosevelt Sound Transit Station. The University Area Transportation Study ranks service as deficient in ability to meet schedules on N.E. 65th St. due to congestion. Taking away a lane in rush hour makes it worse. SDOT staff said that a cycle track would result in one of two designs. Design A would stop buses in the traveled lane and load them there. Riders would step off the curb, cross the cycle track, and then board, and do the reverse in getting off. That puts riders in the path of moving cyclists to get on and off, and to make a higher step to get on and off. Design B would have the buses pull to the curb in the cycle track and board fromthe curb. To accomdodate the cyclists, bus stops would be consolidated to about every five blocks. Riders would have to walk amuch greater distance (often in the rain and cold) and uphill, and would no have the convenience of being near businesses.
N.E. 65th St. has an average daily traffic volume of about 15,000 motor vehicles east-west per day between Roosevelt Way and 25th Ave. N.E. Among them are buses with a seat load of about 50 passengers. By comparison, the bicycle count at Roosevelt Way N.E. and N. E. 65th numbered 81-100 in all directions. Cyclists should choose another street (such as N.E. 68th St., a proposed greenway) that would be compatible with the neighborhood planning in Tomorrow’s Roosevelt Neighborhood Plan, the Seattle Transit Network Development Plan, and the University Area Transportation Study.l

I really don’t understand the anger. People aren’t upset about any sort of real plan, just lines on a map. A cycletrack on 65th is *at least* 3 years off. There’s not any kind of design to critique, just a vague plan. There’s not even funding for it (cycletracks are expensive). Calm down, people. You’ll get your day to fight about a specific plan.

Putting aside the cycletrack and biking issues, businesses on 65th would benefit greatly from a rechannelization/road diet. It would slow cars down and make the street more pleasant for pedestrians. When I eat out, I will walk from Byrant to UDistrict or UVillage. I do this despite businesses on 65th being closer. I do this because 65th sucks to walk on, across, or to just be on. The two destinations I mentioned are much nicer places to sit and relax (even with The Ave’s buses, everyone is traveling slow). So Crepe Cafe, Harissa, 3rd Place Books, and others – your food is delicious, and I wish I could frequent your establishments more often, but 65th is just not a pleasant place to be.

Yup, 65th is a terrible road with a lot of unused capacity that gets translated into speeding and other reckless driving. I go out of my way to avoid it, which generally means avoiding the businesses along it.

N.E. 65th St. through the Ravenna business district has no unused capacity. It is 36 feet wide. The cycle track between the Burke-Gilman trail and Sand Point Way N.E. is 13 feet six inches from curb to the roadside edge of the barrier; it is a two-way track. The text of the bicycle master plan recommends five foot lanes in each direction and a two foot barrier for a total of fourteen feet for one-way tracks. Climbing tracks are wider. Deduct the narrowest of the track measurements (thirteen feet six inches) from thirty six feet leaves twenty-two feet six inches of total vehicular roadway. The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials recommends at minimum ten foot lane for moving traffic. Trucks, buses, and fire engines, among other vehicles, have a coach width of eight-and-one-half feet; they’re required to have side rear view mirrors, commonly six inches to a foot on each side. Those large vehicles therefore are nne-and-one half feet outside mirror edge to mirror edge. As a result, the cycle track leaves just two lanes in each direction.
When there’s only one moving lane, all following cars must stop when any vehicle in the chain stops. That means a left turn block the flow. At signalized interrsections, the curb lane is reserved for right turns for about one hundred feet back. That will end. Thus a right turning vehicle must advance to the head of the queue before it can make its free right. That too will slow traffic. So too with garbage pick-ups. In addition, vehicles go at the pace of the slowest one in the caravan. On uphill slopes, trucks often gear down to make the grade. Everyone will have to slow too. The travel time for buses will be lots longer. Vehicles will use residential streets to get around the congestion.

As I said below – rather than the RBCA getting everyone riled up about vague plans on 65th and 35th, how about waiting to see what SDOT _actually_ proposes? The RBCA letter going around is just wasting peoples’ time. Stating “we take no position on this issue” while making unverified, worst-case claims about traffic is just silly.

The Bike Master Plan is a pie-in-the-sky plan. The previous one hasn’t been completed (see there on page 11, where it says only 60% of the planned network had been built out?). The new one probably won’t be completed by the time it is revamped, either.

Once there’s an actual engineering plan (5 or 10 years from now), you can rant all you want about removal of parking, or potential traffic backups, or the fact that fewer people will be seriously injured and/or die along these stretches of roadway. In the meantime, please stop with the alarmist tone. The BMP is lacking in other areas, but all of this noise around the proposed network drowns out other valid criticisms of the plan.